Search for Hasanni not over yet, volunteer says

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Five year old Hasanni Campbell was reported missing out of a parked car off College Avenue on Harwood Street in Oakland, Calif. on Monday, Aug. 10, 2009, at around 4:18 pm. Hasanni is disabled with braces on his legs and suffers from cerebral palsy. (photo courtesy of Oakland Police Department)

Those who had been aiding Louis Ross and Jennifer Campbell since their 5-year-old foster son, Hasanni Campbell, vanished earlier this month expressed sadness Saturday, a day after the couple was arrested in connection with what investigators now call a homicide.

Oakland police released no new information Saturday, after arresting Campbell, 30, on Friday afternoon at the Union City BART station and Ross, 38, later Friday at the couple’s Fremont home. Campbell was booked Friday night on suspicion of being an accessory to murder. Police were still interviewing Ross late Friday night and said they would be booking him on suspicion of murder.

Prosecutors must decide by Tuesday afternoon whether to charge the couple or release them pending further investigation.

Oakland attorney John Burris, who has been advising Ross and Campbell in recent weeks, said Saturday it was unlikely he would formally represent them; he mainly does civil-rights cases, not criminal defense, and he’s not sure who’ll end up taking the case. Still, he said, he tried to meet with them Saturday morning but was unsuccessful because they were in transit, perhaps for additional police interviews.

“I just want to let them know what’s ahead for them”… what the process looks like in front of them. No more than that,” he said.

Burris said it appears investigators’ probable cause for arresting Ross and Campbell was because Hasanni was never in the vicinity of the Rockridge shoe store where his foster parents claimed they last saw him Aug. 10; police say the boy actually was last seen Aug. 6 with his foster parents near a Walmart store in Fremont.

“It means to me that this is more of an effort, seemingly, to build a circumstantial-evidence-type case and eventually get one or more of them to turn state’s evidence if they have any evidence, and I don’t know that they do,” Burris said. “I’m not surprised at that strategy.”

Sherri-Lyn Miller, who has used her San Leandro shop, All in One Stop, to print up T-shirts with Hasanni’s image to publicize the case and raise funds for the search, said the foster parents’ arrests won’t slow her volunteer effort to locate the boy.

“There’s still a 5-year-old child that’s missing. I’m putting a search team together and leaving my store at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning,” she said. about 15 to 20 volunteers will caravan to the Monterey area, where Ross has lived in the past. “As far as trying to find him, nothing has changed.

“We just have two less people to look for him, and now that they’re in custody the public has no more excuse for not helping to look for this child.”

There is a $10,000 reward for information leading to Hasanni’s whereabouts. Anyone with information may call Crime Stoppers at 510-777-8572 or 510-777-3211. If those numbers are not working, call Oakland Police Sgt. Gus Galindo at 510-238-7934.

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